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Working Paper
Risk and concentration in payment and securities settlement systems
Large value payment and securities settlement systems are important components of an economy's financial system. Many such systems are operated by central banks and are liquidity intensive. Central banks often provide inexpensive liquidity to facilitate settlement. This leads to a number of policy questions about the provision of such liquidity. To answer these questions, central banks need to understand what factors influence the timing of settlement. This paper offers a model to better understand intraday patterns of settlement and identifies three factors that influence the timing of ...
Working Paper
Monetary aggregation theory and statistical index numbers
This paper is the first of two from the Monetary Services Indices (MSI) Project at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The second paper, Working Paper 96-008B, summarizes the methodology, construction and data sources for the an extensive new database of monetary services indices, often referred to as Divisia monetary aggregates, for the United States. This paper surveys the microeconomic theory of the aggregation of monetary assets, bringing together results that are not otherwise readily available in a single source. In addition to indices of the flow of monetary services, the Project's ...
Working Paper
Building new monetary services indices: methodology and source data
This paper is second of two from the Monetary Services Indices (MSI) Project at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The first paper, Working Paper 96-007B, surveys the microeconomic theory of the aggregation of monetary assets. This paper describe a new database of monetary services indices (MSI) for the United States. The MSI measure the flow of monetary services received each period by households from their holdings of monetary assets; the levels of the indices are often also referred to as Divisia monetary aggregates. In addition to indices of the flow of monetary services, the database ...
Working Paper
Portfolio Margining Using PCA Latent Factors
Filtered historical simulation (FHS)—a simple method of calculating Value-at-Risk that reacts quickly to changes in market volatility—is a popular method for calculating margin at central counterparties. However, FHS does not address how correlation can vary through time. Typically, in margin systems, each risk factor is filtered individually so that the computational burden increases linearly as the number of risk factors grows. We propose an alternative method that filters historical returns using latent risk factors derived from principal component analysis. We compare this method's ...
Working Paper
Accurate Evaluation of Expected Shortfall for Linear Portfolios with Elliptically Distributed Risk Factors
We provide an accurate closed-form expression for the expected shortfall of linear portfolios with elliptically distributed risk factors. Our results aim to correct inaccuracies that originate in Kamdem (2005) and are present also in at least thirty other papers referencing it, including the recent survey by Nadarajah, Zhang, and Chan (2014) on estimation methods for expected shortfall. In particular, we show that the correction we provide in the popular multivariate Student t setting eliminates understatement of expected shortfall by a factor varying from at least 4 to more than 100 across ...
Working Paper
Central Clearing and Systemic Liquidity Risk
By stepping between bilateral counterparties, a central counterparty (CCP) transforms credit exposure. CCPs generally improve financial stability. Nevertheless, large CCPs are by nature concentrated and interconnected with major global banks. Moreover, although they mitigate credit risk, CCPs create liquidity risks, because they rely on participants to provide cash. Such requirements increase with both market volatility and default; consequently, CCP liquidity needs are inherently procyclical. This procyclicality makes it more challenging to assess CCP resilience in the rare event that one or ...
Working Paper
Central Clearing and Systemic Liquidity Risk
By stepping between bilateral counterparties, central counterparties (CCPs) transform credit exposure, thereby improving financial stability. But, large CCPs are concentrated and interconnected with major global banks. Moreover, although they mitigate credit risk, CCPs create liquidity risks, because they require participants to provide cash. Such requirements increase with market volatility; consequently, CCP liquidity needs are inherently procyclical. This procyclicality makes it more challenging to assess CCPs’ resilience in the rare event that one or more large financial institutions ...